RAID

Redundant Array of Independent Disks, or RAID, is a way of storing content on a number of hard drives at the same time. A RAID can be software or hardware based on the HDDs that are used - physical or logical ones, however what is common between them is that they all function as just one single unit where information is stored. The top advantage of employing a RAID is redundancy because the info on all drives shall be exactly the same all of the time, so even in case a drive fails for some reason, the data will still be available on the remaining drives. The overall performance is also better because the reading and writing processes could be split between a number of drives, so a single one can't be overloaded. There are different types of RAIDs where the performance and fault tolerance may differ depending on the exact setup - whether your data is written on all drives in real time or it's written on a single drive and then mirrored on another, what number of drives are used for the RAID, etcetera.

RAID in Shared Website Hosting

The SSD drives which our cutting-edge cloud web hosting platform uses for storage function in RAID-Z. This type of RAID is designed to work with the ZFS file system that runs on the platform and it takes advantage of the so-called parity disk - a special drive where information stored on the other drives is copied with an extra bit added to it. In case one of the disks stops working, your sites will continue working from the other ones and after we replace the malfunctioning one, the information which will be duplicated on it will be recovered from what is stored on the remaining drives along with the info from the parity disk. This is performed in order to be able to recalculate the elements of each and every file adequately and to validate the integrity of the info copied on the new drive. This is one more level of security for the information which you upload to your shared website hosting account in addition to the ZFS file system which analyzes a unique digital fingerprint for each and every file on all the drives in real time.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Hosting

In case you host your websites within a semi-dedicated hosting account from our company, all the content which you upload will be held on SSD drives which operate in RAID-Z. With this kind of RAID, at least one of the disks is used for parity - when data is synced between the hard drives, an extra bit is included in it on the parity one. The reasoning behind this is to guarantee the integrity of the data which is copied to a new drive in case one of the hard drives in the RAID fails as the content being copied on the brand new disk is recalculated from the information on the standard disk drives and on the parity one. Another advantage of RAID-Z is the fact that even in the event that a hard drive stops working, the system can easily switch to another one promptly without service interruptions of any kind. RAID-Z adds one more level of safety for the content which you upload on our cloud web hosting platform together with the ZFS file system that uses unique checksums to validate the integrity of each and every file.

RAID in VPS Hosting

The SSD drives that we use on the physical machines where we create virtual private servers operate in RAID to make sure that any content that you upload will be available and intact all the time. At least one drive is employed for parity - one bit of information is added to any data cloned on it. In the event that a main drive breaks down, it is changed and the info which will be cloned on it is calculated between the remaining drives and the parity one. This is done to ensure that the needed information is copied and that not a single file is corrupted as the new drive will be included in the RAID afterwards. In addition, we use hard disk drives working in RAID on the backup servers, so in the event that you add this upgrade to your VPS package, you shall use an even more reliable hosting service because your content will be available on multiple drives irrespective of any kind of unexpected hardware failure.